Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau launched in 1892 in

Belgium
Quickly spread to France and the
rest of Europe
Inspiration from the English Arts
and Crafts movement (William
Morris) and developments in
wrought iron technology (Violletle-Duc)
Closely associated with: the rise of
the industrial bourgeoisie and
regional movements for political
independence
It spread quickly through highquality, mass-produced images in
journals like The Studio
(lithography and
photolithography)

Art Nouveau is the first attempt to replace the

classical system of architecture and the
decorative arts (The Beaux Arts academies
teaching)
It abandoned post-Renaissance realism;
inspirations came from Japan, the Middle Ages,
Rococo
Lasted barely 15 years but many of its traits
incorporated into the subsequent avant-garde
movements
Pressing question: how to preserve the historical
values of art under conditions of industrial
capitalism?
Art Nouveau approach, characteristic of later
avant-gardes as well: drawing from distant and
idealised past in order to find historically
justified yet absolutely new art
Preceded and influenced by the Arts and Crafts
movement, the two the developed concurrently,
modifying each other
Austria fused the two movements; Germany
influenced more by the Arts and Crafts, leading
to the creation of the Deutscher Werkbund:
alliance between industry and the decorative arts

Critical influences
1 The reform of the industrial arts

Art Nouveau is partly the result of a transformation

in industrial or decorative arts initiated earlier in 19th
Century in England and France

1835 parliamentary commission set up to investigate

the decline in artistic quality of machine-made
objects and consequent damage to the export
market

1851 Great Exhibition of Industry of all Nations in

London: commercial and political success;
confirmed low quality of decorative products in
industrial countries

Initiatives: Victoria and Albert Museum and the

Department of Practical Art founded in 1852; similar
actions taken in France

Arthur Mackmurdo, book cover for

Wren's City Churches (1883)

Institutional reforms result in

di!erent developments:

England: the reform of the arts

dominated privately by William
Morris (1834-96) artist and poet
As for John Ruskin, the reform for
him impossible under industrial
capitalism: artist alienated from the
product of labour
In 1861 Morris sets up Morris,
Marshall and Faulkner: context for
artists to relearn crafts as if under the
conditions of medieval guilds
His initiative followed up by others
creating the Arts and Crafts
movement
France di!erent: politically influential
art establishment + the abolition of
guilds during the French Revolution
did not destroy artisanal traditions as
the Industrialised Revolution did in
England
For both countries the medieval guild
is the model; in France this was
combined with the Rococo

Red House,
Bexleyheath
Philip Webb, 1959

2 Viollet-le-Duc and structural rationalism

Use of iron as an expressive architectural medium the second big influence after Arts and
Crafts
The use of iron dominated the debate between the traditionalists and progressive-positivist
architects throughout the 19th Century in France
Viollet-le-Ducs theories and designs associated iron with the reform of the decorative arts
An idealist decorative movement grafted onto the positivist structural tradition
Viollet-le-Duc: rational core of Gothic architecture is the only true basis for a modern
architecture
Art Nouveau derived the following principles from Viollet-le-Duc:
The exposure of the armature of a building as a visually logical system
The spatial organisation according to function rather than symmetry and proportion
The importance of materials as generators of form
The concept of organic form derived from the Romantic movement
The study of vernacular domestic architecture
His theory and designs became the rallying point for those opposed to the Beaux-Arts, in
France, elsewhere in Europe and in North America

3 Symbolism

The final two decades of the nineteenth century: important

change
The century had been dominated by the philosophy Positivism
(Auguste Comte 1798-1857); a belief in progress made possible
by science and technology
In literature and art Naturalism corresponded to Positivism
By 1880s belief in it is eroding together with liberal politics
several political events contributed to this, including the
European economic depression that started in 1873
France, the home of Positivism: increased influence of German
philosophy
Symbolist movement in literature led the attack: art should not
imitate appearances but should reveal an essential underlying
reality

Belgian symbolist poet Emile Verhaeren: in

[Symbolism]the fact and the world become a mere pretext for
the idea; they are treated as appearance, condemned to incessant
variability, appearing ultimately as dreams in our mind.

The Symbolists did not reject the sciences, they looked on

science as the verification of subjective states of mind

Edvard Munch, Scream, 1893

Art Nouveau in Belgium and France

Formal principles:
Characteristic motif of Art Nouveau: plant-like form, first found in English
book illustration and French ceramics in the 1870s and 1880s
Imitation of nature subordinated to the organisation of plane surfaces
Functional dependency of ornament leads to a paradoxical reversal: instead of
obeying the form of the object, ornament merges with the object and animates
it with life
Consequences: objects become single organic entity, rather than (classical)
aggregation of parts; ornament no longer space-filling ornament and empty
space establish a dialogue (possible influence of Japanese art)
Boundaries between form and ornament become blurred

 Van de Velde chair ornament and

structure indistinguishable
Ornament completes form, of
which it is an extension, and we
recognise the meaning and
justification of ornament in its
function. This function consists in
structuring the form and not
adorning itThe relations
between the structural and
dynamographic ornament and the
form or surfaces must be so
intimate that the ornament will
seem to have determined the form.
Henry van de Velde (1863-1957) Principles of
Modern Architectonic Beauty (1917)

 Desire to extend beyond the object whole interiors.

In many ensembles and room individual pieces of furniture absorbed
into a larger spatial and plastic unity.
Henry van de Velde, Havana Cigar Shop 1899, Berlin

Brussels
In 1892 Willy Finch (1854-1936) and Van de Velde inaugurate a decorative art movement based on
Arts and Crafts Society
Van de Velde lectures follow Morris in defining art as the expression of joy in work but recognise
the necessity of machine production a contradiction never resolved
Van de Velde, Werkbund Theatre, 1913-14, Cologne, Germany

Victor Horta (18611947)

Beaux-Arts training; 10
years of work in a
neoclassical style
modified by structural
rationalism of Viollet-leDuc
1893 private house for
Emile Tassel
First in a series of houses
for the Belgian
professional elite
Combination of Violletle-Ducs exposed metal
structure with
ornamental motifs from
the French and English
decorative arts

 Tassel, Solvay, Van Eetvelde all designed

between 1892 and 1895 ingenious range of
solutions to narrow sites in Brussels
Plan divided into 3 sections middle is the
top-lit staircase, the visual and social hub of
the house
Reception rooms and conservatories of the
piano nobile, spatially fluid connections,
accented by the use of glass and mirror
(recall theatre foyers houses intended for
social display)
Structure dissolves into ornament

Hotel Van Eetvelde, 1895

Victor Horta
Maison du Peuple,
Brussels 1897-1900 (demolished
1965)

Built for the Belgian Workers

Socialist Party
The principles of Viollet-le-Duc
pursued to their logical conclusion
Brick and stone vernacular
architecture exploited to reveal the
construction: brick, stone, iron and
glass
Internally: the framework is
exposed

France
Art Nouveau in France closely related
to that of Belgium but without the
socialist, political connotations
1895 German art dealer Siegfried Bing
opens a gallery in Paris called LArt
Nouveau
Van de Velde designed three rooms for
it

Hector Guimard (1867-1942)

integrates the new decorative principles
into a coherent architectural style
Stronger allegiance to Viollet-le-Duc
even than Hortas
Maison Coilliot 1897, Lille, early work
based on Viollets illustrations

 Impressed by Hortas work in Brussels, he designs the Castle Beranger in

Paris (1894-98)
In the Paris Metro entrances (c.1900) he pushed the analogy between metal
structure and plant form further than anything Horta did

 Guimard, Humber de Romans concert hall, completed in 1901, demolished in 1905

One of the major achievements of Structural Rationalism, alongside Hortas Maison
du Peuple
main branches, eight in number, support a rather high cupola, pierced, like the sides,
with bays filled with pale yellow stained glass, through which an abundance of light
finds its way into the hall. The framework is of steel, but the metal covered with
mahoganythe result is the most elaborate roof ever conceived by a French architect.
Fernand Mazade, 1902

Dutch Art Nouveau

Split into two groups, one influenced

by the curvilinear Belgian movement,
the other by a more rationalist
approach, influenced more by Violletle-Duc and Arts and Crafts
Structural and rationalist influences
pronounced in Hendrick Petrus

Berlage (1856-1934)

Neo-Romanesque after 1890, basic

volumes articulated and structural
materials exposed; uses Art Nouveau
ornaments sparingly to emphasise
structural junctions
Houses organised with central top-lit
halls, but instead of metal structures,
he uses brick (groin vaults in the spirit
of Viollet-le-Duc)
Berlages furniture anticipates De
Stijl and Constructivists

Berlage, Exchange, Amsterdam 1897-1903

Competition 1883, despite being awarded

4th place, he gets the commission
This is an architecture of explicit
construction:
Before all else the wall must be shown
naked in all its sleek beauty and anything
fixed on it must be shunned as an
embarrassment
The art of the master builder lies in this, in
the creation of space, not the sketching of
faades. A spatial envelope is established
by means of walls whereby a space is
manifested according to the complexity of
the walling. Berlage
The development of the overall layout and
form was one of simplification
Load-brearing brick structure is in
accordance with the principles of
Structural Rationalism, while the granite
marks the points of structural transference
and bearing

Berlage, Amsterdam South, 1901; 1915

The logic applied to individual

buildings is taken into the immediate
urban context but also the urban
context and socio-political
commitment in general
Deplored the disurbanising tendency
of the English garden city; cities have
a supreme cultural importance
1901: commissioned to prepare a plan
for Amsterdam South
The insistence on enclosure,
postulated in the Exchange, is now
taken to the street; some principles
taken from Camillo Sitte
Served by the mass transport of the
electric tram
1915: revises the plan, incorporates
Haussmann-like avenues in order to
establish a continuity of the urban
environment

Modernisme in Barcelona

Modernisme the name for Art Nouveau in

Catalan
Predates the Belgian movement by several years
Inspired independently by the publications of
Viollet-le-Duc and Arts and Crafts movement
Modernisme more closely related to the
nineteenth-century eclecticism than the Art
Nouveau of France and Belgium
1888 Lluis Domenech I Montener (1859-1923)
publishes the article In Search of a National
Architecture
The new industrial bourgeoisie of Catalonia saw
Modernisme as an urban symbol of national
progress but while Belgium associated Art
Nouveau with an anti-Catholic international
socialism, in Catalonia it was Catholic, nationalist
and politically conservative
In the early works Moorish motifs used to suggest
regionalism
Historicist inventions mixed with new structural
ideas (exposed iron beams)

Antoni Gaudi i Cornet

the dominant figure

(1852-1926)

Worked according to two principles:

1 derived from Viollet-le-Duc study
of architecture starts with the
mechanical conditions of building
2 imagination of the architect should
be free from all stylistic conventions
Work characterised by free association
of forms suggestive of animal,
geological or vegetal formations
Structure imitates irregular forms
found in nature
Intimate, subjective architecture that
became a popular symbol of national
identity
Cultural and personal anxieties at the
core of his architecture will fascinate
the surrealists in 1930s

The Sagrada Familia,

(1883)

Park Guell, 1900-1914

Glasgow

Closer to continental European Art

Nouveau than Arts and Crafts movement
in England
No obvious political, theoretical or
organisational focus
Glasgows New Art related to the
distinctive institutional, commercial and
industrial formations of the city
New form evolved around 1890s
The Four: Charles Rennie Mackintosh
(1868-1928), key figure; Margaret
Macdonald, artist, his wife; Frances
Macdonald, he sister; Herbert MacNair,
her husband
Highly stylised blend of figurative and
plant forms; severe rectilinear geometry,
decorative value of the line; light pastel
colours, use of white, occasional deep
tones

Mackintosh, House for

an Art Lover
competition (1900)
influential in Austria and
Germany (Ho!manns
Palais Stoclet)
Glasgow School of Art
(1899; 1907-09)

Vienna
The concepts behind Symbolism and Art Nouveau
strongly influenced by German Romanticism and
philosophical Idealism
This finds expression in the work of the Viennese art
historian Alois Riegel (1858-1905): decorative arts
were the origin of all artistic expression; art rooted in
indigenous culture, not derived from a universal
natural law
This related to the ideas of John Ruskin and William
Morris
Stands in contrast with the ideas derived from the
Enlightenment architecture aligned with progress,
science and the Cartesian spirit
In the Austro-Hungarian Empire this conflict of
concepts underscored by the conflict between the
metropolis (liberal and rationalist) and the ethnic
minorities seeking to assert identity, to whom Art
Nouveau became an emblem of political and cultural
freedom

 Liberal, rationalist spirit in Austria

epitomised by
Otto Wagner (1841-1918)
On the other side of the
ideological divide from Camillo
Sitte
For Wagner the modern city
should consist of a regular grid
with new building types
Post O"ce Savings Bank, Vienna
(1904-06) his rationalism reaches
its peak
Does not abandon the allegorical
language of classicism but extends
it apart from figurative ornament
there are also redundant boltheads on the facade
These, like the functional glass
and metal banking hall, these are
both symbols and manifestations
of modernity (Colquhoun)

1893 Wagner appointed director

of the School of Architecture at
the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts

His two famous students: Joseph

Maria Olbrich (1867-1908) and
Josef Ho!mann (1870-1956)

Olbrichs influence on Wagner:

decorative motifs of Jugendstil
(the German Art Nouveau)
Early careers of Olbrich and
Ho!mann the same both belong
to Wiener Secession, a group that
split from the academy in 1897;
both worked in architecture and
the decorative arts

The Secession marked the

introduction of Jugendstil into
Austria

 After a few years both

abandon Van de Veldes
dynamic integration of
ornament and structure and
work in a more rectilinear
organisation of planar surfaces
and geometric ornament
A"nity both with Wagners
classicism and the late Arts
and Crafts designers
Olbrichs artists colony in
Darmstadt are variations of
the theme of the English freestyle house

Ho!manns Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1905-11) is a

Gesamtkunstwerk a total work of art: murals by
Gustav Klimt and furniture and fittings by the
architect (close to Mackintoshs Hill House and
House for an Art Lover)

Over the next five years both architects turned to

classical eclecticism (Biedermeier style)